Firmin jammed radar for more than 100 combat missions during Vietnam War

Updated 10:38 am, Thursday, April 19, 2012

Lt. Col. Wade Firmin “was very dogged. He did what he believed was right.”

Lt. Col. Wade Firmin “was very dogged. He did what he believed was right.”

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Firmin jammed radar for more than 100 combat missions during Vietnam War

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He was a crewmember who jammed radar in more than 100 combat missions over North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Then Lt. Col. Wade Firmin made his home in San Antonio and continued to fight for what he believed in.

“He was very dogged,” said his son in-law Barry Steveson. “He did what he believed was right.”

Firmin died after a lengthy illness Saturday at age 77.

From assuring public access to Medina Lake, where he owned a weekend home and enjoyed water skiing; to working to limit taxation in Bexar County; his family said he was unwavering in his determination to correct what he saw as wrongs.

Sometimes his focus and willingness to speak out made his wife of 52 years, Nellie Firmin, want to “hide under a rock,” said his daughter Shunda Steveson. But his work got results.

When Six Flags Fiesta Texas started its nightly fireworks displays near his home in northern Bexar County in the early 1990s, he helped lead the fight to limit the storage of the toxic chemicals used in the fireworks over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.

“Once he was stationed here, he was never leaving,” Barry Steveson said. “He loved the city.”

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Lt. Col. Wade Firmin flew combat missions in the Vietnam War as a crewmember who jammed radar. An obituary on Thursday's page B4 of the Express-News and on mySA.com misidentified him as a combat pilot.